As the information network has mushroomed in recent years, large numbers of terminals with the capacity to transmit information have come to be connected to each other via servers which either accumulate or exchange data through the network. One example of this is home security systems, in which a house is connected on line to a security office which can offer, based on sensor data, either simple surveillance or a higher level of control service. In existing control services, however, when the sensor data assume some specified state, the server is not always able to determine accurately from past data what action should be taken. For example, when a sensor transmits a signal representing detection of an object and location of that sensor, at what point should the server request that the security company send someone out, or contact the police rather than the security company? Questions like these cannot be determined very well based only on the past data stored in the security company's server. Furthermore, when data about past experiences are used for a current situation, they are only effective under specific limit conditions which do not always match those of the actual situation. It is thus difficult to make good use of the stored data. For example, the signals from sensors installed in people's homes, as discussed above, will be affected by what type of sensor it is and by how it is mounted. In order to use previous data effectively and accurately, we need sensor data which are not affected by the condition of the sensor. Currently, no one has a method to accumulate data from which the effects of the various states of the sensors have been removed, and there is no information processing system which uses such data.
Furthermore, in the example of the home security system given above, the sensors are installed in various ways. This makes it extremely difficult to use previous data as it is for a data base, since they consist of raw sensor data accumulated under different conditions. If these data are used, their accuracy remains in doubt. In current systems, a skilled person must test the sensors at the start-up, which rules out the difficult start-up.
Japanese Patent publication 11-327639 proposes a system which selects an optimal route for a robot or navigation system, etc. at the point of design. The system chooses the optimal route between two states, which may be states not yet established or even thought through, so as to avoid faults while fulfilling conditions previously established in the data. This system has a unit to watch for obstacles, which, whenever it detects a new obstacle, adds it to the existing data while continuing to attend to it. In this way it can determine the optimal course of movement at a given moment based on the most recent limit conditions, allowing it to revise what the robot's next movement will be in the process of choosing its course. In such systems, however, the type of sensors used to watch for obstacles and the conditions under which they are installed vary from system to system. For this reason the idea of standardizing the output values of the sensors and making use of previously accumulated data has not been considered, and there are no systems which can use existing data effectively.
The problem of optimization described above is addressed in Japanese Patent Publication 2000-222377, which provides a means to conduct an efficient search for an optimal value without regard for local variations in cost function. Such a system calculates the cost functions and the actual frequency of coordinate values. Then, based on these frequencies, a selection unit chooses the optimal candidate. Since this system limits itself to a method for searching a coordinate space in order to optimize estimated values in this space, it does not provide a technique to move an object from its current position to a desired target position.
Japanese Patent publication 10-307979 provides a system to be used in a security system in which a device contacts a security office using a phone line. This system changes the phone number for calls from outside the security zone. Japanese Patent Publication 2000-207318 discloses a system which allows a service company to limit, at their discretion, the data clients send them so as to prevent information not needed for maintenance from being transmitted. Japanese Patent Publication 11-178076 discloses a system that allows the user to dynamically customize his data line. This system integrates provision of service and ongoing management of operation through a data communication network or a surveillance control network at the level of both phone and data lines, and it makes managing the execution of designs and ongoing operations more efficient.
However, none of these systems has a scheme to make use of previously accumulated data. The system architecture is finalized as far as possible when the system is conceptualized. Setting up such a system thus requires a great deal of time, and once set up, the system has no capacity to make effective use of invaluable empirical data that were accumulated in the past.
Japanese Patent Publication 11-252670 discloses a remote surveillance system using the Internet and sensor terminals. In this system, every sensor belonging to a terminal installed in a plant executes a specific processing routine when a given set of conditions is met. However, due to the various characteristics of these sensors and the way they are installed, the sensors are not always operating under uniform conditions, so their output values are non-identical. The system offers no way to standardize the output values so as to universalize previous data in order to make further use of them. Similarly, Japanese Patent Publication 8-292059 discloses a means to begin to guide someone in a vehicle to quickly search out the optimal route when it becomes necessary to search a route while moving. In this case, a GPS receiver is used to figure out the current position; but no thought was given to standardizing the output signal, since there is only one GPS system in the world.
So even though a great many empirical data are stored in a given server, as described above, they can indicate what action is to be taken only under certain specific conditions. It is rare that the actual circumstances under which different systems were used would match perfectly, and the problem of different circumstances remains. It is therefore not at all easy to use previously accumulated data as a basis to find the correct series of actions to execute in order to move optimally from the current phenomenon to a target phenomenon that is a solution to a given problem.
The great many empirical data mentioned above is used only under comparatively limited conditions, and they are not always used efficiently enough. And since no arrangement exists that would allow a second party to make effective use of someone else's data, it is difficult even to accumulate data efficiently.